Chocolate Facts - Your Online Source for Information on Chocolates
Some Important Chocolate Facts
• One of the most important chocolate facts is that cocoa and chocolate are produced from the leaves of the cacao tree.
• The cacao tree originated in South America.
• The United States produces more chocolate than any other country.
• The Olmecs were the first to use chocolate in 1500-400 B.C.
• Cocoa was first introduced in Europe in the 1600s.
• In World War II, Hershey Chocolate Bars were distributed in soldiers’ rations.
• Walter Baker Chocolate was the first company to make a baking chocolate. They were located in Massachusetts.
• The Aztecs used cacao beans as currency.
• The Swiss eat more chocolate than any other country. England is second.
• Cocoa is harvested twice a year.
• Chocolate chips were offered by Nestle in 1939.
• Among the interesting chocolate facts: people spend $7 billion every year on chocolate.
• 1.5 billion pounds of milk is used every year in America to produce chocolate.
• On average, every American eats ten to twelve pounds of chocolate each year.
• Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Kisses were introduced in 1907. Today Hershey’s produces over twenty million kisses every day.
• Cadbury’s, an English company, made the first chocolate bar in the world in 1842.
• The anti-oxidants in chocolate lower your risk of heart disease.
• Chocolate facts tell us how milk chocolate was created. A Swiss man named Daniel Peter came up with milk chocolate after he had experimented for eight years. He sold the formula to a neighbor, Henri Nestle, and Nestle Chocolate was born.
• Chocolate is low in caffeine. It only has as much caffeine as one cup of decaffeinated coffee.
• The shower scene in Hitchcock’s move, Psycho, used chocolate syrup for blood.
• On average, the Swiss eat twenty-one pounds of chocolate every day.
• In 1849, an Italian named Domonbro Ghirardelli began to produce chocolate in the United States. It was at the time of the U.S. Gold Rush. The original Ghirardello factory is still there in San Francisco.
• When it was first created in the 1930s, the Three Musketeers Bar had portions of strawberry, chocolate and vanilla. The recipe used today was created in the decade of the forties.
• Milton Hershey was only nineteen years old when he established his chocolate company in Pennsylvania.
• In North America, more people crave chocolate than any other food.
• White chocolate contains no chocolate.
• The theobromine in chocolate can be toxic to dogs.
• Eating chocolates in moderate amounts has health benefits. The anti-oxidants help prevent cancer and heart disease. It also can aid in treating depression.
• Chocolate provides us with energy. Scientists have discovered that one chocolate chip can give us enough energy to walk 150 feet.
• Americans eat 2.8 billion pounds of candy every year. Approximately 50-percent of this is chocolate.
• Forty-percent of all the almonds produced in the world go into chocolate products.
• The record weight of a chocolate bar is 5000 pounds.
• The very first recipe for chocolate brownies appeared in 1896 in the Fanny Farmer cookbook.